Blacks 'Injected' With Syphilis? Never Happened
One peculiar footnote of the Jeremiah Wright controversy has been the repetition -- by educated black men on national television -- of a stubborn myth. That the U.S. government "injected black men with syphilis."
Rev. Wright said from the pulpit, in a video clip shown on Fox News: "The government lied about the Tuskegee experiment! They purposely infected African-American men with syphilis!"
Wright is wrong. That's not what the Tuskegee experiment was.
In the "Tuskegee Study of Untreated Syphilis in the Negro Male," federal researchers refused to treat a group of black men who already had syphilis, long after a cure had been found.
Instead, doctors treated these men like laboratory animals, studying the course of the disease over decades.
The Tuskegee experiment was the most shameful episode in the history of the U.S. Public Health Service. President Bill Clinton apologized on behalf of the nation in 1997.
But the government did not infect black men with syphilis.
To invoke the Tuskegee experiment to suggest that the government invented AIDS to kill black people, as Rev. Wright did... that dishonors the truth. There is no excuse for it. It must stop.
Yet here's what Obery Hendricks, a professor at New York Theological Seminary, said on "The O'Reilly Factor" Monday night in defense of Rev. Wright: "We do know the government injected black men with syphilis."
On "Hardball with Chris Matthews" on Tuesday, journalist Ed Gordon said it's "not so far-fetched" to suppose that AIDS is weapon of genocide... considering that "the government was giving syphilis to black men."
Likewise, CNN contributor Roland Martin said last Friday: "I was watching another channel where they played a sermon where [Rev. Wright] said that America infected African-American men with
syphilis, called the Tuskegee experiment. That actually did, indeed, happen."
No. It. Did. Not.
And the only reason Obery Hendricks, Ed Gordon and Roland Martin weren't humiliated on national television is because Bill O'Reilly, Chris Matthews and Anderson Cooper are more ignorant about black history than they are.
I can't believe that none of those well-educated black gentlemen has read the highly praised book "Bad Blood: The Tuskegee Syphilis Experiment." Or seen the HBO movie "Miss Evers' Boys."
I recommend they do so before popping off again in public about the Tuskegee experiment. Same goes for Jeremiah Wright.
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What makes you think that a nation who would willfully study a group of black men and watch them die of syphillis when they were able to cure them, would not also be capable of injecting them with the disease? And is there that much of a difference between the two? I call if premeditated murder, either way.
It's not a question of what the government is "capable of." The question is how are we to conduct a public discourse in this country. But playing fast and loose with the facts of history? By feeding into a myth? What good comes from that?
@Undercover -
Ok - well how about this.
Start a discourse. Start a discussion.
How are you going to do this? What is your plan?
One must acknowledge that all participants in the discussion are going to be coming to the table from their own perspectives, and have their own beliefs, whether factual or mythical.
Herein lies the challenge. There are so many factors that go into how someone 'reads' something, how someone 'sees' something, and how much one is willing to 'believe' based upon a myriad of factors.
So, how do you propose that such a discussion occurs, given the maelstrom that America is perpetually in with regard to race and several instances of injustice (not ONLY with regard to race, but also with regard to class, gender, and even ageism (the forgotten 'ism').
Let's take your statements for the sake of further argument, and agree.
WHAT IS THE Rx?
if there's no difference, then why not state it accurately?
The bottom line is there was very harsh mistreatment of blacks that would cause many in the community to be skeptical of the government, and rightfully so. Creating an article disputing the paranoid nature of Wrights comments while pointing out inhuman treatment of blacks does not sit well. It totally negates this entire article.
i agree.....and forty years of it. so basically, people my grandfather's age were fighting in a segregated military, sitting in the back of the bus, drinking from "colored" drinking fountains, had no voting rights, were lynched regularly by whites who did this with impunity......
people my mother's age were marrying, falling in love and making babies with men who unknowingly were giving them a deadly disease,
people my age were being infected AT BIRTH with this disease.......
goodness gracious, what the hell are Black people so damn mad about?
An emphasis on one factual error - amen to "difference without distinction" - that then goes on to completely miss the main point. They didn't tell them they had the disease. They withheld needed treatment in order to study their illness. They exposed the innocent people in their families to infection. People died needlessly. Small wonder this has been shorthanded into "injected"...
Poor critical thinking, fellow.
You use the term critical thinking as if it means something! Well, it does. And your response shows a distinct lack of critical thinking. Words have meaning! Inject is an action verb. No injections (noun) took place. The difference is small, but significant.
Semper fi
Come on you're better than that. I killed him, but shot him I didn't stab him like you said. It's ok to make the correction, but you make it sound like the results of untreated syphilis is any different and that an act of omission is different from one of commission in this case. Using a control group for guinea pigs is not unheard of.
The lengths to which the Surgeon general and the Tuskegee experiment supervisors went to prevent their experimental victims from receiving real treatment (even issuing special wavers exempting the men in the study who volunteered for military service during WWII from being given the required syphillis screening-so they would receive no antibiotics from the armed services) could easily lead one to think that the reported deaths of 128 of the men from syphillis and its complications was government sponsored murder.
And what of the 40 wives who became infected and the 19 children born with congenital syphillis?
And those are just some of the facts that are known. What is deeply frightening about this horror is that it went on for 40 years, with so many people involved and aware, and no one stopping it.
I was born in 1947, I graduated from high school in 1965, I graduated my state University in 1971- all this time, this murderous "experiment" was still going on!
My God, if this could happen what couldn't happen?
Your outrage is misdirected.
Why did no one go to jail over this? In 1972 there was nothing illegal about the Tuskegee experiment? These brain dead morally putrified experimenters were operating within the laws of the land? Then why not (apart from the question of whether as early as the 60's or 70's anyone knew enough about retroviruses to invent the AIDS virus) believe the CIA capable of it? We do ourselves no national service by belittling the legitimate fears of citizens who grew up in the middle of all this horror.
preach!
The government intentionally allowed African American men to believe they were being treated for syphylis, and didn't treat them. As early as 1947, during the course of the study, there was a simple cure, penicillin. As Wikipedia relates:
"By 1947, penicillin had become the standard treatment for syphilis. Prior to this discovery, syphilis frequently led to a chronic, painful and fatal multisystem disease. Rather than treat all syphilitic subjects with penicillin and close the study, or split off a control group for testing penicillin; the Tuskegee scientists withheld penicillin and information about penicillin, purely to continue to study how the disease spreads and kills. Participants were also prevented from accessing syphilis treatment programs that were available to other people in the area. The study continued until 1972, when a leak to the press resulted in its termination."
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tuskegee_Study_of_Untreated_Syphilis_in_the_Negro_Male
The end result was the same as injecting, or infecting or infecting the men.
Perhaps it was worse, since if they had been infected or injected with syphilis, some might have been able to obtain curative treatment.
It's fine to correct the technical record, but to act as if there is a moral difference is ridiculous.
One of my college papers was about the Tuskegee Airmen and subsequent human abuses by the US Government in using humans without informed consent for medical and scientific experimentation.
The physical pain and debilitation these black men experienced from withholding medical treatment was barbarous. These men died at a much younger age than they would have, had they received treatment. By the end of the experiment, 28 of the men had died directly of syphilis, 100 were dead of related complications, 40 of their wives had been infected, and 19 of their children had been born with congenital syphilis. In essence, our government condoned assault and murder to further understand the effects of a disease on the human body. This despite the fact, that during the experiment, a treatment for a cure had been discovered.
There are other numerous incidents in which our government has preyed upon the unsuspecting citizen. During the 1940s and 50's MIT conducted experiments on young boys who were "mentally retarded" . The project, funded by the US Atomic Energy Commission, was to study the effects of radioactive iron on the human body. The testing protocol called for the boys to be fed micro curies of a radioisotope of calcium (Ca-45) in their cereal.
The Department of Energy has since opened their records on some of their cold war Human Radiation Experiments. http://www.hss.energy.gov/healthsafety/ohre/
While it's true, in the case of Tuskegee, that the men were NOT injected with syphilis our government has repeatedly violated human rights by performing scientific and medical tests on human subjects without adequate informed consent.
We should also note that America and the other allied countries of WWII were mortified by the human experiments that had been conducted on civilians and POWs by sadistic NAZI doctors. The stories, images, notes, and files put on display during the Nuremburg trials became the driving force in creating the Declaration of Geneva in 1948.
The Declaration of Geneva, as currently amended, reads:
At the time of being admitted as a member of the medical profession:
I solemnly pledge to consecrate my life to the service of humanity;
I will give to my teachers the respect and gratitude that is their due;
I will practise my profession with conscience and dignity;
The health of my patient will be my first consideration;
I will respect the secrets that are confided in me, even after the patient has died;
I will maintain by all the means in my power, the honour and the noble traditions of the medical profession;
My colleagues will be my sisters and brothers;
I will not permit considerations of age, disease or disability, creed, ethnic origin, gender, nationality, political affiliation, race, sexual orientation, social standing or any other factor to intervene between my duty and my patient;
I will maintain the utmost respect for human life;
I will not use my medical knowledge to violate human rights and civil liberties, even under threat;
I make these promises solemnly, freely and upon my honour.
KEEP IN MIND, THE TUSKEGEE EXPERIMENT RAN FOR 40 YEARS (1932 - 1972)!!
dude you need your own comedy routine - this was like an episode of MadTV!
That's like saying, they were NOT raped on a Sunday. Dam it, get your facts right! It happened on a Monday!
And then you go on to discuss the days of the week instead of the rape. lol
Thanks for the clarification - if your grandfather was "treated" as such, or refused treatment (since you're arguing over semantics) you would be a relative i could do without.
so they didn't infect the men you say but they did infect the wives and children by not treating. so your point is pointless.kinda like the difference between one less or one more person dying needlessly. all the deaths are still needless.
Precisely!
nomobull is right.
Mills needs comments on his blog. Check out his other race-baiting blogs!
well, so they DID infect African Americans with syphilis. And a similar argument could be made about the AIDS crisis in Africa today. When there are treatments, and precautions as simple as using condoms, are denied, then HIV-AIDS is knowingly extended into more of the population on purpose.
David some people can only see things clearly if it happened to them or a member of their family. Native Americans were killed by giving them infected blankets....the Tuskeege scandal was targeting black men. HOW WOULD YOU FEEL IF THIS HAD HAPPENED TO YOU ?
This is what I call chutzpah. You have produced an entire blog splitting hairs and grappling witn a semantic windmill - Don Quixote-like. Presumably you did not have anything intelligent or substantive to write about. Pray tell - what is the essential difference ? The point of what Wright or others have said is simply that the blacks have historically been subjected to inhuman or sub-human (lab rats) treatment. Can you refute that ?
I remember reading that at an orphanage somewhere in New England they fed childen radioactive oatmeal to study radiation in humans. I wouldn't put anything past the government when they want something. Out here in the west they were also blowing up atom bombs and that had to have some effect on the locals. Its not a black white thing, its an evil government thing.
Sorry ...but by not treating the men the doctors were exposing all of the people that the men came in contact with to the disease......or don't those people count ? These black me were used as lab rats...and the government had to apologize .....if it weren't criminal they wouldn' theve >>>DUH. The men were poor and illiterate and didn't fully comprehend what was happening to them. WRONG JUST WRONG. After this blacks might think AIDS was another experiment.
Thanks for the facts. I have read the same. People are entitled to their own opinions but never to their own facts. And yes, the truth will set you free.
A lot of really good posts in here.
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